Americas and Oceania Collections blog

Exploring the Library’s collections from the Americas and Oceania

30 January 2010

In Search of J. D. Salinger

Few people can make it through their teenage years without meeting Holden Caulfield, and readers of this blog will no doubt be aware that his creator passed away on 27 January, at the age of 91.

As well as his evocation - or creation - of teenage angst, Salinger was famous for his reclusiveness and privacy, something that the British poet and critic Ian Hamilton discovered in 1986, when the publication of his biography In Search of J.D. Salinger: A Writing Life (1935–65) was stopped.  

Salinger had sued him for infringing the copyright of some of the letters he had sent to friends and associates. Hamilton published the book two years later with the relevant texts paraphrased or summarised, and the ruling remains an important one in copyright case law. Ironically, the transcript of the trial and its depositions perhaps recorded as much about Salinger's private life as did the biography.

Hamilton's papers, including those relating to the biography and trial, are now held by the British Library.

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